Category: Do It Yourself

Sometimes a gift doesn’t need to be expensive, it’s the thought that counts. I don’t remember who told me that, but I do run into trouble during the holiday season. I spent hours and hours thinking what to get for person A, then B, then C, etc. There are times when I ended up with a gift cards for some people that I think they already own everything in the world. So, here comes the question, what do you get for people that already have everything?

I found this pottery painting place near where we live. It’s literally 5 minutes drive from where we live called Art Bayou. When I first tried out my first pottery painting was at Petroglyph Ceramic Lounge, it was located in Los Gatos, California. It’s amazing how fast time flies, before I know it, it has been three years already. I walked into the ceramic lounge without a clue how and if I could paint. I was told to walk around and look for a piece or ceramic I would like to paint. I did as I was told, I picked out the biggest mug I could find. In my mind, I wanted to paint something for my little cousin. I started painting as soon as I grabbed the mug, before I know it I had already spent four hours at the lounge.

After seeing Art Bayou, Victor and I decided to give it another try. Why? Just because it’s the holidays season, what’s better than making something for someone you care very much for?

That’s another Sunday for this family.

We planned to paint a couple more for friends and family. What’s a better way to tell them you love them or care for them than this?

I hope you guys would give it a try if you can find a pottery store around your area. Did I mention it’s extremely therapeutic to do so?

I am not sure how many of you out there run into the same problem I do. I used to buy candles from Bath and Body Works, I would stock up on them when they have sales. I use a coffee warmer to warm up my candles so that I don’t go through them as quickly as lighting them, unfortunately, candles don’t last forever. So the better question is, what do you do when you have an empty glass jar like me? I think so far I have collected at least 6 of these empty containers, I asked myself how do I re-purpose these glass containers instead of throwing them in the trash?

After thinking long and hard, I decided to decorate them with twine. Twine is cheap and all you need is a hot glue gun and a roll of twine. I got mine from Michaels, I am pretty sure you could get all these from Hobby Lobby or whatever your favorite craft store is. I started off with some clean glass jars. I wiped down the outside with some lint free cloth, and I start applying hot glue on the outside of the glass jars. After that I just start wrapping the twine around the glass jar and keep going.

Throwing them away seems like a waste, I decided to clean out the glass container and put them through the dish washer to get rid of the left over oil and wax.These are the things you need to make them a little more presentable. Make sure you get the high temp version so that the twines stayed better on the glass, it doesn’t need to be fancy, you just need something that would get the job done. All you have to do is apply hot glue on the clean glass container and lay the twine on top of the hot glue. Make sure you apply a little hot glue at a time, so that they do not solidify before you could get to it.It took a while for me to wrap the first one but after a while you will get used to the wrapping and you will be faster at wrapping these babies. The one that I wrapped up with twines actually looked like I got it from some store.Here I am showing there of them that I made, there are different designs you can do to these glass jar, you do not have to do what I did here. These are just what’s convenient for me.

For me, this is a really quick and easy project that I could do on a Sunday morning while I wait for my lovely boyfriend to get out of bed and have breakfast. I hope you enjoy making these easy DIY glass jars. I use them to hold my stationary and some small things that are laying around all over the condo.

Do any of you guys remember in one of the previous blog post I mentioned about getting some planters for herbs or succulents? Here it is, we made easy do it yourself planters. Of course this DIY planter is probably not as nice as those that you could find in the nurseries, but keep in mind, making these planters probably cost a fraction of what you would pay from the nurseries.

Making these planters takes some time to measure, cut, and assemble, but they make a great activity with others, trust me they weren’t as troublesome as you think. We picked up some treated wood from our local Lowe’s, you could also find them from Home Depot too. Just keep in mind if you use treated wood to build the planters, you can’t plant anything that you would eat. If you would like to plant herbs or any consumable plants, you should use cedar wood, which is pricier than treated wood. Since this was trial run we decided to just go with treated wood and make something much smaller, in case we failed.

We wanted to make our planters with the following dimensions (7′ W x 6.5′ H x 27′ L). I have to give credit to this handy boyfriend, we had Lowe’s cut up the bigger side pieces but he had to cut up the rest of the end pieces with a hand saw. We used 2 pieces of 1×6 wood 90 inches each. The planter is held together with 1.5 inch wood screws.

Putting the planter together is probably the fastest process, just a couple of screws and viola, you have a pretty sturdy planter.

All we have to do now is add in the small pieces for both ends. Those were the ends that Victor had to hand saw them because they were too small for the guy at Lowe’s to saw using the industrial saw.As soon as you screwed both sides of the end piece to the rest of the planter, you are all set. I sanded our down just so that they won’t have any splinters, and they do look a lot nicer after you sand then down.

When you are done sanding them, you are pretty much all set to put in potting soil as well as the plants of your choice. I have to confess we did spend money to buy another planter from the nursery when I was picking up the herbs this morning since we couldn’t wait any longer for the basil plants that we wanted to plant.

We used the planter that we made out of treated wood for our English Lavender plants.As well as some awesome succulents. My sister and I both love the succulent plants that looks like mini roses.Last but not least, here are the Thai basil plants that we picked up. We love making basil chicken fried rice as most of you already know.Alright, I lied, I also did pick up some sweet basil too. Who doesn’t like some good old Caprese salad?

I guess that’s it for today. We got everything that we wanted to get and we went to the Kalamazoo Art Fair 2017 as well. I will write another post talking about the art fair. I hope you guys have as much fun as we did making these planters and starting our small garden. Have fun planting this summer!

I had to include this picture. He was actually smiling when I said “Smile.” Look like Mylo is loving his new garden too.

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